Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

Derby and she had still been in a honeymoon haze when he had left for overseas. She would have gone crazy if she hadn’t received periodic letters from him. Usually they were filled with cryptic references to his misery, but at least she’d known that he was alive. Learning that Derby hadn’t extended his father that courtesy made her heartsick for the old man.

“That was terribly thoughtless of him.”

“I got one letter telling me he’d been drafted and was going to Europe to kill Huns. I moved around a lot for work, so he’d been long gone by the time that letter caught up with me.

“Armistice came and went without a word from him. I took that as a bad sign, but the military is supposed to let folks back home know when their loved one has fallen or is missing, right?

“So I went up to Camp Bowie, where he’d been stationed before shipping out. After a lot of rigamarole and sorting through red tape, I was told he’d made it back stateside. His last paycheck from the army had been mailed to a post office box in Sherman. I wrote to him there just to tell him where I’d lit in case he ever wanted to find me.”

He took in the rustic interior of the shack, as though seeing it from her perspective for the first time. She followed the track of his eyes. Cobwebs laced the rafters that were blackened from age and smoke. A cowhide that looked like it had mange was nailed to the north wall. She supposed that it wasn’t so much for decoration as to keep out the elements. The flue of the potbellied stove was piecemeal, forming a leaky and crooked outlet to the hole in the ceiling.

“Ain’t much,” he said.

Laurel didn’t detect any degree of humility or apology in that statement, and she couldn’t help but admire him for that.

He gave the simmering gravy a stir. “I didn’t hear anything from Derby until the telegram office sent a boy out here day before yesterday. All it said was that he was coming. Nothing more.”

Laurel dug at a crack in the dirt floor with the toe of her shoe. “There was no job, no work waiting for him, was there?”

He shifted his weight, redistributing it unevenly, placing more on the right side of his body. “There’s work around.”

“Of what kind?”

“Same as me.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Plummer, but—”

“Irv.”

“Irv. What kind of work do you do?”

“I was a railroad man. Over thirty years at it. Went all over, repairing tracks. That’s how I got the bum hip.” He patted his left leg joint. “Coupler backed into it. Didn’t stop me from working, though. Just made it harder.

“But I got old and tired, so I stopped railroading several years ago and settled into this place. Now I do odd jobs in and around town.” He looked over at her with something of a grin. “I guess you could say I’m a fix-it man.”

“Are there enough things around here that need fixing to keep you busy?” And solvent? She wanted to ask that, but didn’t.

“I’m stretched pretty thin, all right.” He set tin plates and cutlery on the small table, which was not much larger than a checkerboard. “How much had Derby told you about me? Not much good, I reckon.”

“He hadn’t told me anything except that you were still living, as far as he knew. He said the two of you weren’t close.”

He gave a sad nod. “Well, then at least that didn’t come as a shock to you.”

“What caused the rift?”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully, then said, “His mama died young.” He gave the gravy another stir. “What about you? Is your family up in North Texas?”

“Yes. My daddy and uncle grow cotton. Or did. The last three crops got ruined by the boll weevil.”

“You’ll want to notify your folks of this.”

She took a breath, wishing she could postpone this, but reasoned that he needed to know sooner rather than later. “We don’t speak.”

He came around and studied her for a moment, then asked, “Was it Derby that split y’all up?” He must’ve seen the answer in her expression, because he said, “Figured.”

“The blame wasn’t all his. The split was my daddy’s doing. He’s a hard man. He disapproved of Derby’s sinful ways.”

“Drinking and dancing?”

She huffed a laugh. “To my daddy’s mind, even a game of dominoes will send you to hell. Derby enjoyed egging him on. One day Daddy had enough and put his foot down. He told me that Derby’s sinfulness was rubbing off on me, and that if I married him, no one in my family would be allowed to utter my name again. Not ever. It would be as though I’d never been born.”

She gazed down at her sleeping daughter, relieved that her stern, intolerant father would never exercise any influence over her. “Fine, I told him. I didn’t want to be a member of a family so wrathful and unloving. Both of us meant what we said. Mama, of course, had to go along with Daddy.”

Her mother’s plight made Laurel sad. She’d been cowed into letting Laurel go without a quibble. But there was no help for that. Her mother, taking seriously her submissive role, had made her bed, and she would die in it.

Suddenly it occurred to Laurel that she unwittingly had been taking that same path. If she hadn’t yielded to Derby’s irrational decision, hadn’t gone dumbly along for harmony’s sake, she wouldn’t be in this predicament.